Edited by Alloe Mak

Michael Kinnucan writes, “The mask’s opposite is not the face, but the veil. The mask, all actual, leaves nothing undisclosed; the veil is pure potential, a nothing which intimates.” I come back to this line when thinking about what it means to mask as a neurodivergent person. Masking isn’t about mystery; it’s about total obliteration. It’s not a playful costume, but an airtight covering. For many, it’s a total performance of a sense of ‘normalcy’ that leaves no room for the unfiltered self to peek through. 

This erasure isn’t just personal, it’s political. On September 22, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, claimed that taking Tylenol during pregnancy causes autism in infants, a baseless statement that has been disputed by medical professionals several times. The harm of such a claim ripples outward. It stigmatizes autistic children and young people, blames mothers for what the U.S government has called “the autism epidemic,” and fuels the idea that autism is a pathology to be avoided at all costs rather than a neurodivergent identity that deserves respect and equity. Under steadily growing rhetoric like this, the pressure to mask grows heavier. When the public reduces your existence to a cautionary tale, the instinct to disappear behind a mask only deepens. 

For Black queer people with autism, masking is never just one mask—it’s a full costume of competence. Making an uncomfortable effort to hold eye contact, regulate tone, and translate your emotions into something more palatable to others may be exhausting, but it’s also necessary armour. It’s code-switching before you’re read as angry or unstable. It’s concealing parts of your authentic self to avoid being stereotyped into something dangerous. Where our straight, white, middle-class peers might mask to blend in, for Black folks, masking is a method of survival. 

The mask can consume the soul. But underneath, there is still something veiled that remains. A self hinted at under the layers of masks, semi-visible in a slip, in stimming, and for many Black, queer autistic people, found through their art. 

I wasn’t diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder until later in life. As a child, many of the symptoms were there—sensory overload, meltdowns, hyperfixations, blunt honesty, etc. Looking back, the list is seemingly endless. However, instead of the adults around me seeing my behaviour as typical neurodivergence, it was written off as bad behaviour. Teachers told my mother I was defiant, disruptive, and too much to handle in class, despite my getting perfect grades. No one questioned whether my brain simply worked differently. Instead, they decided my marginalization explained it all. As a low-class, Black, openly queer kid who grew up in Scarborough, I was easy to slot into an existing script about trouble, bad attitude, and delinquency. 

For many Black, autistic, queer, and trans children, there is rarely space to be seen as quirky or different in the way that our white peers often are. The same traits that earn other children additional support, or even admiration, are pathologized in us. What gets read as eccentricity in one body is reframed as a threat in another. 

I learned quickly that being my unmasked self wasn’t safe. Stimming, being blunt, and overwhelming displays of emotion all had to be tucked away. It was hidden behind layers of ‘good’ behaviour, which was really white, straight, and upper-class behaviour. But this behaviour wasn’t natural to me, it was a costume I had to sew together with code switching, silence, and swallowing parts of myself until I was almost unrecognizable. 

As I got older, I began to explore art as a way to express myself. As I created things, I finally found small cracks in the mask I had built. I went to high school for performing and visual arts, and I felt most myself when I was on stage or behind a canvas. For what felt like the first time, my intensity wasn’t something to tone down; it was a skill. In my late teenage years, I turned to writing, especially personal essays and pieces about other marginalized people like me. Writing let me put on my veiled self on the page, and instead of being punished for it, I was praised. 

Masking, then, is never just one thing. It stretches across context, communities, and history. For T Edward, a 19-year-old Black and queer musician with autism and OCD, masking in creative and professional spaces has always been layered. 

“I have to hide my Blackness for the white people and my autism for the neurotypical people. It’s a double hand,” they told me. In predominantly white spaces like hardcore music, in which Edward’s band plays, masking isn’t just a matter of toning down. It’s about actively countering the assumption that their presence itself is disruptive. 

They described how, when they are unmasked, people often misread their bluntness as aggression or their enthusiasm as being obnoxious. Shar Hayles, a Caribbean, queer nail artist with AuDHD (Autism and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) based in Toronto, echoed these sentiments. She says that, being raised around a lot of white people from small towns, she had to constantly code-switch so she wouldn’t come off as “too Black,” all while having to also tone down her queerness. Like me, she found her neurodivergent traits were pathologized. 

“What might be seen as just being upset in someone gets read as threatening or unprofessional in me,” she said. That double standard, where white women are given space to falter but Black women are punished for the same behaviour, is at the heart of why masking can feel like survival for us.

This is especially clear when looking at Black folks with autism outside of North America. Edward mentioned how, growing up in Saint Lucia, surrounded by other Black people, their symptoms weren’t framed through racial stereotypes. “I was still the weird kid,” Edward reflected. “But it didn’t come with the connotation of being aggressive and crazy.” 

Kame Marshall-Rutty, an Afro-Indigenous, autistic trans woman who creates illustrations and music under the name Kame Trueblonde, explained that being marginalized within a primarily unmarginalized space forces people to become monoliths. For her, autism is often buried under the weight of other identities. She said, “Within the eyes of our contemporary society, one discounts the other. And I am forced to choose a struggle.” That forced choice, of whether to foreground race, gender, or neurodivergence, means that unmasking rarely feels safe. 

Despite growing up in different environments, Edward, Hayles, and Marshall-Rutty pointed to art as a rare space where their masks can be loosened and the veil can appear. For Edward, the split is clear. Public performances demand a mask, but private creation allows something more true. On stage, their presence is shaped by the assumptions of whiteness and ableism, but in the intimacy of their own music, they could move beyond those imposed scripts. The mask was survival, but art became a veil. 

Hayles described it differently. They explained that, for them, doing art professionally became both a sanctuary and a form of resistance. What started as solely a special interest quickly turned into a practice where she could not only express herself, but also build others up. She said that she treats each nail as a tiny canvas, offering each client a chance to inhabit themselves more fully. In those moments, the hyperawareness that comes from masking slips away. “Having others put their trust in me, especially during a freestyle, is such an amazing feeling,” she said. Sharing that trust with others can even allow the veil to slip. 

Marshall-Rutty also says her neurodivergence positively intertwines with her art, removing her from the pressure of social ideals and giving her the platform to speak freely for herself. For her, art resists the expectation to translate her experience into palatable terms. “The artwork will always be less about trying to make you understand, but to have spoken for myself,” she said. Her voice no longer becomes a constant explanation, but a declaration. 

When I began writing, it felt like the first time I had been praised for not fitting into the costume of good behaviour I had built. Like Edward, Hayles, and Marshall-Rutty, I found that art doesn’t always erase the need to mask, but it creates cracks where the veiled self can peek through. The danger of masking is total obliteration, but art refuses that. It creates the possibility of being seen without explanation or apology. It always gestures towards the veiled self, hinted at in a bassline, brushstroke, or a sentence on a page, and shows we can survive beneath the weight of multiple masks.